Hello! Thanks for visiting my blog. I want to explain why I am starting the blog. Here is my family.
So called SCHOOL REFUSAL kid
My 13 year old child Bo (formally Poppy) hasn't been in school since February 2021. Up to that point, I thought our life was pretty fine and happy. Well, it is not true in some ways, Poppy (I will use Poppy for the past, and Bo for present) was having some anxiety struggles from year 4 to the end of year 5 and Poppy was seeing CAMHS for a year. Poppy became happier in year 6 and entered a 'good' secondary school as a music scholar.
Poppy's year 7 was quite tough, with physical and cyber bullying. And then the pandemic lock down started. Poppy started to show some severe signs of OCD from spring 2020 and this got worse. Then comes school reopening in September 2020. Poppy was kind of ok going back to school, however it soon became a struggle. Me and Dan were constantly 'supporting' Poppy through some tough moments and Poppy continued to attend school. Did we really 'support' Poppy? No, we didn't. Looking back, we were doing totally the opposite to what we should have done as parents at that time. The best thing we could actually do at that time was to simply listen to Poppy and take them out of the school. (We tried to transfer them to some other schools in the area but all of them had more than 50 children on their waiting lists.)
At this point Poppy was back seeing CAMHS with a new therapist, and suicidal thoughts and self harming were mentioned. CAMHS this time around didn't work out the way Poppy or us really hoped for and the therapist and Poppy didn't get on well at all. That led to an involvement from Social Services too (I will talk about this in detail in the future). Self harming became visible at home, and Poppy was put onto a care plan. We threw way all sharp objects at home and so on. But Poppy always found another way to harm. That was the first time I found myself crying uncontrollably.
It got worse and worse over the autumn 2020, and in November, we had a big zoom meeting with us, Poppy and the senco in school, CAMHS, and social services. This was the hardest meeting, hearing Poppy's darkest suicidal thoughts and no will to live. I was hysterical and I don't have much memory of this meeting.
I decided I needed to evacuate Poppy from this madness. I got tickets to Japan (my original home). We flew 5 days later. It was 2nd of December 2020, I couldn't have cared less about unauthorised absences from school or penalty or whatever, or covid restriction to cross countries. Poppy's life was my only concern.
Japan and the start of 'School Refusal'
So Poppy, Harry and myself were in Japan for 5 weeks in total. It was absolutely wonderful to be back home and having help from my family and best friends. Poppy seemed much calmer and a little happier. We came back to the UK in mid January, to find another national lock down. So it was a remote lessons online. Poppy tried to get back into education, but Poppy had some panic attacks every time Poppy they tried to join lessons. After talking to CAMHS etc, we decided to keep Poppy away from school until the end of Easter holiday. At this point, Poppy came out as a transgender boy called Bo. Our reaction? We are here to support him 100%!
Easter holiday was over and i knew Bo was not well enough to go back to school. So yes, Bo is now out of school / education since February 2021.